3 Ghosts
by cognomen
Summary: Inspired distantly by Dicken's A Christmas Carol, Shion reflects on the ghosts in her life. A short piece for my fic advent calendar.


He would never tell anybody this, but when Ziggy powered down late at night, he dreamed. It couldn't really be described as dreaming, as his mind could no longer technically enter the REM state imposed by the natural release of somnolent chemicals by his body. Instead, he remembered, in a hazy way, his past. His mind laid out details of minutes he'd never have told you were important, back when he was still alive, a boy chasing a dog or a dog chasing a boy.

A red ball in a grey world, bouncing back and forth from him to a child, who laughed at the simplicity of the game. A woman who smiled a certain way just for him. A time when everything was simple, and it was so easy to be alive.

Shion knew. One time, when she was passing through his quarters on the Durandal, curiosity provoked her to look at the readings on the tuning bed. She'd watched indicator lights move in a pattern that wasn't random enough for unconscious static. Leaning over, she found herself studying him. In ways, he was so human it was very hard to think of him as not alive. His eyes didn't move the way a sleeping person's would, his chest was still. He gave off no heat, did not stir or shift.

Was that what humanity was, back then? They could turn what had been a living person into something so cold and metallic, and -still-? At one point, she supposed, he'd have been even more still and silent. Shion found herself looking, from time to time. Of course, the people who had made him would have covered it up, patched his hair back in. Made it invisible. But she'd noticed, on occasion, that it didn't all lay the same way. Seen once, when he was charging up for battle, that the back of his mouth was a fascinating patchwork of metal. She didn't know for certain that it wasn't just part of the regular construction, she'd never met another Zigguraut, but she saw these things with a trained eye.

She was looking, she discovered again, at the back of his head. Or what she could see of it, anyway. She didn't know what she expected, to see a mess of brains hanging out, or wires poking through, or a big bloody hole. Just as she was berating herself, his eyes slid open. Some sort of proximity sensor must have picked up her presence, relaying it back to him as it was intended, and rousing him from his 'slumber'.

"You were dreaming," Shion attempted to cover the fact that she was caught staring, leaned back sharply as though he could miss the way she was standing in a waking haze. True, he went in for tuning every night the way a person would sleep, and even gave the appearance of sleeping. He woke every morning with deep circles under his eyes - she wondered if that was from the lack of rest, or bruising etched permanently on once-human skin.

"No," he said, clearly. He did not wake up drowsy, his sensors simply switched on. "I don't."

He meant, he didn't dream. Shion realized she could hear tiny servos and motors whirring to slow life in his body, the silence of the room and her focus revealing noises she'd never detected. She felt disgusted, suddenly, wanted to be anywhere but there where she could hear his inhumanity and her mind told her with definite certainty that - no, this man was human. Couldn't be anything but. She was staring a perfect impossibility in the face, the human machine, the past back to haunt the future with dreams that it denied.

"Was there something you wanted?" His voice broke the silence again, perfectly reasonable and professionally friendly. She caught her brain working out how to program that in.

"No!" Her voice replied cheerfully, and she bowed, making a tiny show of her embarrassment. "I- I was just passing through on my way to the cargo hold," Which was the truth, even if she'd completely forgotten -why- at the the exact moment. "Sorry I woke you!" She smiled, and he didn't bat a single eyelash in confusion, or question her.

He didn't even pretend to care that she had intruded. While he was awake, he moved around and denied that he was human. While he was asleep, he was completely still and cried out loud and clear that he could think and feel and remember. He took comfort in his machinery, where Shion found it disturbing.

Eventually, she remembered what she was looking for in the hold.

---

Finding her hand captured once again by an enthusiastic child-sized Realien, Shion found herself going along for the ride. Momo drew them all in, gathered them all together for meals when someone went stray or forgot. She even went far enough to get Ziggy when he dissappeared for the evening and forgot to come back up again when everyone was having dinner. Shion didn't know how Momo had convinced him to sit and participate in dinnertime discussion with everyone, but she seemed to be able to coax him to be almost alive. Somehow, it wasn't awkward to have him sit in and not eat - KOS-MOS didn't eat either, so he wasn't singled out.

Even when they were all drifting apart, wandering to the furthest parts of the ship and lost in the deepest of thoughts and plans for the future, she pulled them back to the here and now, tying their little family together as firmly as she could.

Shion felt bad for Momo, she knew that she herself drifted off enough times. It was almost pitiful watching the girl who knew so much about how to be alive try to coax the Zigguraut into living again. She recognized in him a need for family that ran as deep as her own. The problem was that he had grown up, forced himself beyond childish dreams of family and happiness. She didn't know how to make him forget that he'd lost it, or to make him remember that he had it once.

She sometimes found the little girl engaging KOS-MOS in conversation, attempting to drag more than cut-and-dried answers out of the android's logic circuits. Just often enough to encourage the Realian, KOS-MOS gave irregular answers.

For now, it was enough to hold everyone together, keep them from isolating themselves even in each others company. In spite of herself, Shion thought of her shipmates like she would family. She looked forward to eating and talking with them, felt comfortable and at home on the Durandal. She couldn't be sure it would always be that way, but for now, Momo held them together, trying to keep time from passing.

---

Always two steps ahead, chaos caught Shion when she was feeling particularly grumpy, and made her smile. He did it through some combination of his own easy smile and the gentle way he joked and talked and moved through life. Like he could see anything coming, and ready himself to weather the storm.

"There's the smile I knew you had inside," he said, gently. Almost every time.

Shion had seen him do it to others, too. He brought out the best in just about everybody, calling things forward that she often suspected they didn't even know about themselves. He'd told Shion, one time, that he couldn't wait to see her in love again.

She'd flustered, and laughed, and told him it was unlikely. He just smiled.

One time, she'd heard his voice low, in the hall, and paused. Unseen, she listened, eventually became aware that it was a conversation, or that he was talking and someone was listening.

"Oh, everyone grows up sometime," He'd lilted, softly and in his own way. She could hear two sets of heels thudding lightly against the benches in the seating area. They were kicking their feet. "It's simple, you just have to realize what you want to be."

"But I know adults who still don't know what they want to be," a childish voice protested, and Shion smiled where she was hidden.

It was the truth.

"Well, I think they know. They just haven't -realized-," chaos laughed gently, and there was a pause. "Do you know what you want to be?"

"Oh, I won't - I mean." The Realian stumbled, as if she were about to explain to chaos that she wouldn't ever grow up, not really. She seemed to realize that he must already know by now, and then really thought about his question. "I want to be in a family."

"I expect you'll be an excellent mother." chaos sounded almost catty, Shion could hear his smile. She had to agree with him, strange though the thought was. Shion slipped away, so as not to disturb them, though she did hear Momo begin a laughing protest.

She wondered if he ever saw people as what they were, instead of their infinite potential. 


End file.
